“Well, what about all the trash that’s in the car from all your trips?” Guess who. Hmmmm, lemme see…

• Four partial bottles of water and two full ones. Not mine.
• One partial bottle of that ucky blue Gatorade. Definitely not mine!
• Three books of matches from Yvonne’s Airport Restaurant and one from the Wagon Wheel Saloon. Yes, *that* Wagon Wheel Saloon. Mine? I doubt it since I don’t smoke cigars. Or anything else, for that matter.
• Two Uniball Microfine pens. Mine!
• Two mechanical pencils. Definitely not mine!
• One Albion College pen, bic-style. Not mine! Or maybe it is. I don’t remember who picked that pen up.
• One red sharpie. Probably mine, left over from YAG days.
• A roll of scotch tape. Also probably a leftover from YAG.
• A little pad of car-shaped note paper that looks like it was formerly wet. Not mine. I don’t work for the EPA.
• A pad of small neon yellow post-it notes. Probably mine, probably a YAG leftover.
• Two mis-matched KMart type knit gloves. Yup, those would be mine and they were in there for a reason.
• Two paper clips. Probably mine.
• Two bobby pins. Not mine. With *my* hair? Why bother?
• Four little packages of Kleenex.
• A package of Windex wipes, completely dried out and useless. I probably put it in there.
• Two ice scrapers.
• A map of Michigan.
• Two dust cloths.
• One of those casette thingies that lets you plug your iPod in to the vee-hickle speakers.
• A cell phone charger.
• A Shell receipt.
• Uncountable particles of dust, dirt, sand, mud, leaves and other organic material.
• Hair (mine, no doubt) and other crud and corruption.

I dunno. I just do not want to take responsibility for every little blasted scrap of flotsam and jetsam and cosmic debris that inhabits the landfill and all three of the vee-hickles that currently reside on the adjacent street and driveway. Yeah, I have probably left some crap in various vee-hickles. Yeah, I did do a lot of traveling this winter. Not by choice for the most part, although I made the best of it when I could. But I am not sure that I am solely responsible for most of whatever crap gets left in various vee-hickles. Sigh.

It could be worse. I didn’t find any McDonald’s bags. Sincerely yours, Garbage Woman. grook GROK!

Radio fundraiser type girl on NPR (chirpy little sing-song type voice): “I just became a mommy, so I had to buy a mommy car.” So, of course, she has a minivan now and, this being the Planet Ann Arbor, it is a Honda Odyssey. First, I OWN a couple of Hondas and they are great but, like, so what? But what I really want to say is, “excuse me just a minute here. Mommy car? HAD to buy?”

Back in the Jurassic Age, when *I* first became a mommy, we were running two 5-year-old Ford Fiestas. Remember those? Little 2-door econoboxes. They eventually became known as “Mommy’s little gold car, Daddy’s little blue car, and the orange car.” Orange car? A Fiesta down the street from us.

I have to admit, it got *awfully* tiresome getting a baby in and out of the back seat of a 2-door vee-hickle so, when Lizard was about 8 months old, we added a VW Jetta to the fleet. Four doors, manual transmission, NO air-conditioning! Luxury! But we still drove those little Fiestas another five years or so. We eventually gave one of them away and sold the other for $50. Who the heck would buy a $50 car, I wondered. A guy whose current vee-hickle lacked a seat, of course.

I never became a soccer mom but I did eventually join the ranks of moms with minivans. Schlepping two kids and huge shambling mounds of crap back and forth to the Great White North just became too much for our little Jetta, not to mention my sanity. The red Plymouth Voyager was the first car either one of us had ever owned that had air conditioning and an automatic transmission. It was a pretty darn good workhorse but I wouldn’t call it fancy. If anything, the increased number of seats just provided more places for people to pee. grok grok. You are in trouble now, you ugly old bag. frok grook

We traded in the old red van for my beautiful blue POC. It was the prettiest vee-hickle I ever saw and I fell in love with it at first sight. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about me. grok Yeah, it liked ME the best. grok grok After a rocky relationship that lasted almost ten years, we parted ways last fall. I cried. grok grok. You should’ve given it to me! grok grok The kids are grown up now and I am done with minivans. I have downsized to little 4-door sedans. Hondas. Accord. Civic. Not exactly sustainable living but a baby step in that direction. Maybe we’ll get a new Wrangler one of these years. Those are fun vee-hickles. But I’ll never fall in love again.

What I really want to know is just what page of the Mommy Manual states, “Buy a minivan.” Is it anywhere near “Head off to the nearest housing development and buy a McMansion.” Or “Buy soccer gear and start training your baby NOW so she’ll be the best player on the 3-year-old team.” Or, well, y’all get the idea. People, there are reasons for buying minivans and some of them include babies but having a baby is not THE reason to buy a minivan. Throw the blasted Mommy Manual away and start thinking for yourself. This is about YOU and YOUR BABY. What do YOU need?